Page 27 of Insolence (Eisha’s Hidden Codices #1)

“You're worth it," she whispers, pressing a kiss to my jaw.

“You’re daring tonight,” I snort, but her soft body and gentle breath on my skin send heat directly to my core. Fierce yearning rears up in me, so strong it’s frightening.

“Can’t we simply have fun?” she murmurs, kissing her way down my neck. “It won’t be any trouble, I promise.”

My core clenches despite myself. “You can’t promise tha— gods !

” I crumple, heat zapping my clit, as she sinks her teeth into the top of my shoulder.

Lust hits me like a brick, jerking my limbs with need.

“How long can we carry on like this?” I moan, sagging against her.

“Sneaking off and getting wrapped up in each other? It won’t be sustainable forever. ”

When she pulls away, her hooded sapphire gaze meets mine. The room swims around us as I gaze back, desire mingling with temptation.

“Let’s be honest,” she says, her voice low and soft.

“It’s just a matter of time, isn’t it? Because there’s no way in hell I’m going to let you be.

” Her mouth moves to my ear. “Now that I’ve tasted your sweet pussy, songbird, there’s nothing that exists in this world that could keep me away from you. ”

I shudder when her mouth brushes mine. Heat pools between my legs, morphing into slick arousal when she deepens the kiss. I can’t help groaning against her lips and tongue.

The memory of that tongue against my swollen clit rattles around in my head, and I can’t stifle a gasp. “How do we always end up like this in places we can get caught?”

“Don’t act like you don’t enjoy the excitement.” She recaptures my mouth with hers before I can reply, and swift ardor flushes every inch of me. My bones turn to liquid.

The truth is I do enjoy the excitement. Far too much, I’m afraid. And the relentless hunger already has me in its clutches again.

Head spinning, I twine my fingers in her hair. “Threaten me with a good time, and you had better mean it,” I finally husk.

Her hands tighten around me before loosening. “Come on. You’re about to find out how much I mean it. I’d rather it not be here.”

Then I’m on my feet with her pulling me back toward the atrium, while my heart pounds in my throat and down, deep inside me.

What are we doing? This place is crawling with people! But the breathless exhilaration and the intense need are all-consuming. I can’t think around it, can’t react like I should.

She drops my hand when we cross into the atrium, sneaking behind a row of potted fruit trees and cutting toward the northwest corner. I’m right behind her as she takes the turn to the cloakroom.

She waits until I’m through before pulling the door shut behind us. Her beautiful face is intense, bordering on possessive, when she tangles her hand in my hair and draws me close. Her lips bruising mine are a delicious relief.

“Gods,” I moan against her mouth.

My focus narrows, blotting out the rest of the world while she walks me backward.

She reaches past me to part the row of heavy wool cloaks that hang from a rack spanning the length of the rear wall.

A long shelf runs overhead, piled high with bins of extra hats, gloves, and scarves.

I let her push me through the heavy cloaks and trap me against the plaster where there’s half a foot of space.

She lets the garments go behind her. Some of them are stuck, forced apart by her shoulders, but the front must be sealed because our surroundings fall into darkness.

“Please,” I gasp as her mouth and hands seize me, nipping my neck and lips. Hangers scrape the metal rod above us with her movements.

An appetite I’ve been clamoring to suppress shrugs off the coils of my ever-weakening restraint.

My lips are burning for hers, my fingers grasping hungrily under her lovely lace dress, seemingly outside of my control.

One hand clutches the plush curve of her hip while the other slips between her thighs, caressing her center through damp underwear.

“Gods, Tiss,” she mumbles between kisses, rocking her hips. “The things you do to me.”

A part of me hesitates. This is crazy. We're going to get caught!

We shouldn’t be alone in here to begin with, much less fooling around in public with an event in the next room. The Archive was too close a call. This is pressing our luck to its utter limits.

But she’s bunching up my dress and pulling aside my wet panties, her fingers teasing my clit. I'm aching for her. Gods be damned if I can make myself obey mere logic.

“Tiss?” she asks, breaking our kiss. “You all right?”

And the rules have been broken so many times in order for this to happen, for us to end up tangled together in a cloakroom, doing the exact thing we’ve been forbidden from. Yet again.

What’s one more indiscretion? One more act of sacrilege in the grand scheme of things?

My eyes lock onto hers in the dark. “Please,” I repeat my plea. “Fuck me, Sadrie.”

Her mouth crushes mine, and she enters me at once. Her fingers slide in with no resistance, filling and stretching—

Mother of all life. Pleasure sings through me, buckling my knees.

I slip my hand into her underwear, groaning when I reach her soaked center. Excitement bolts through me as I push into her silken heat, curling my knuckles with a hiss.

“Poor baby. You’ve been suffering all night,” I sigh, relishing each stroke of her fingers and doing my best to match her rhythm through the mind-bending bliss.

“Feels like I’ve been suffering all my life for you,” she rasps and shudders, her free hand landing hard on the wall by my shoulder.

“All your life these last six days?" I chuckle quietly, the wet sounds becoming profane. Then, “Oh, shit .”

She hits a spot inside of me I didn’t know I had. My already plateauing pleasure is threatening to spill over. “You’re going to make me come.”

“I believe that’s the point, songbird,” comes her wry reply.

“ Now ,” I hear myself whine, and dig the pads of my fingers into the backside of her clit, kneading the swollen tissue there to hurry her along.

She gives a hoarse cry, then answers by drawing almost completely out of me before slamming back in.

Oh, gods help me. My legs threaten to give way. She does it again, picking up speed and pounding. I bite off a curse, clinging to her.

Both of us thrust fast and hard into each other until the wet noises and hangers clacking fill my ears. Pleasure rises and prepares to crest as we drive each other to the brink of beautiful annihilation.

That’s when the gods-be-damned door flies open with a bone-jarring bang .

I gasp at the exact moment her mouth presses hard over mine.

“Where on earth could she have gone ?” Ghisele's sharp voice cuts through the thick air, only a few blessed feet away on the other side of the cloaks.

Why is it always Ghisele, for gods’ sakes?

“Both of them.” Cordelia’s voice joins in. “I swear it’s like herding cats.”

Sadrie and I are frozen and clutching one another, cheeks pressed together. Hearts pounding, our senses are heightened and straining. We’re still inside of each other, neither of us moving, and my gods, I can feel her pulse racing through her walls.

The mixture of arousal and fear is a too-heady cocktail, yet again. And I am teetering. Right on the fraying edge of ecstasy.

“Did they go outside, do you think?”

Oh, hell.

“Let’s find out,” says Ghisele, two feet in front of my face.

Oh, no! No, no, no—

The cloaks are snapped apart to my left, light from the gas-fueled ceiling fixture filtering in just a few feet away. Startled, Sadrie flinches, her fingers curling just right, hangers scraping overhead.

Fuck! My climax jerks my torso when it erupts, my cry thankfully stifled in my throat.

But there’s no ongoing friction. She’s too distracted to realize that I’m coming. Two cloaks are torn from the hangers on my left. I have to strain to keep my hips still, acutely aware of how close we are to being found out, when all I want is to ride her fingers fast and rough.

Fabric rustles as the heavy garments are thrown around shoulders to the sounds of Cordelia and Ghisele speculating as to our whereabouts.

The electrifying pinnacle I started off with fizzles. Empty spasms wrack my pelvis, and tears prick my eyes. I can’t decide if I want to scream from disappointment or cry with mortification.

“I know how it looks,” says Cordelia, “but she’ll just have to wait.” It sounds like she’s moving further away, thank the gods .

Sadrie presses her forehead to mine, breath hissing shakily as I involuntarily clench around her, praying to be released from this unsatisfying hell.

“You don’t seem to understand.” The remaining cloaks are snapped back together, our hiding spot plunged into darkness again. “That’s not a thing she does so well.” Ghisele's voice fades, following Cordelia out.

Relief washes over me. Somehow, miraculously, Sadrie and I are alone again. My strangely hollow spasms are finished, whatever strength I have left draining from my muscles in their wake.

“D… did you just—?” Amusement laces Sadrie's tone as we slide out of each other.

“Yes.”

Her soft laughter ghosts across my cheek. “Oh, my gods. Now you're the poor baby.”

“Enjoying yourself, are you?”

She grabs my hand. A delicious shiver ripples through me while she licks my fingers clean, followed by her own.

“Tiss, when you’re coming, I am always enjoying myself.”

I give her arm a light smack. “Gods, you’re dangerous.”

“A terrible influence,” she agrees.

Groaning, I shove past her. “All I have to say is, it's a good thing you're as charming as you are. And that ? That was way too damn close!” My hair is a nest of static when I emerge, my knees barely supporting my weight.

The inferno inside of me is infinitely worse for having been stoked and left unsatisfied.

But my stomach is flipping with something that resembles glee, of all things.

While my ruined climax gave me little in the way of pleasure, the relief coursing through me in the wake of powerful muscle spasms and nearly getting caught, yet again, is almost euphoric.

The combination is a hell of a mind-fuck.

She squeezes out behind me, giggling, her cheeks flushed and her curls a tousled mess. “We probably shouldn’t do that again.”

Arranging my face in my sternest glare, I spin around. “Are you actually insane? That was never up for debate.”

“Admit it, though. That was invigorating.”

“ Invigorating , even.” Gods help me, I’m half-tempted to wring her neck as we set about helping straighten each other’s hair and clothes.

But the way her eyes sparkle, her mouth twitching with more barely restrained laughter, fills me with an entirely different sort of heat. “Actually, I think we're both insane.”

She just grins in response, as if she's won some sort of victory.

How can I stay angry with her when part of me wants to laugh about the whole absurd mess too? But I’m not about to encourage her. She’s too much trouble as it is. I'd hate to see what she'd do given the reinforcement.

As soon as we step into the hallway, we run into our search party.

“There you two are!”

Ghisele stalks past Cordelia to face me. “The prioress wants to speak with you, Tiss.” Her eyes are narrowed to thin slivers of jade, the tip of her nose red from the cold. “I don’t know what you did to piss her off, but she’s not happy. Making her wait around didn't help.”

They must have brought the cold in with them because a chill crawls down my spine. There is truly no mercy in this ruthless world.